The Revelation of Hermes
by
Dennis William Hauck
Hermes Trismegistus describes breaking away from material
reality and traveling along the hidden cosmic axis in
The Divine Pymander (Mind of the
Sovereignty), part of the Corpus
Hermeticum. While meditating, Hermes enters an altered state of
consciousness. “My thought was raised to a great height,” he explains, “yet my
bodily senses had been put under restraint as in sleep, though not such sleep as
that of men weighed down by fullness of food or bodily weariness.” Thus freed
from attachment to his bodily senses, his mind begins to travel along the
spiritual axis of reality.
“Forthwith all things changed in aspect before me and were
opened out in a moment. And I beheld a boundless view: all was changed into
light, a mild and joyous light; and I marveled when I saw it. And in a little
while, there came to be in one part a downward-tending darkness, terrible and
grim. And thereafter I saw the darkness changing into a watery substance, which
was unspeakably tossed about. Coiling in sinuous folds, it gave forth smoke as
from fire; and I heard it making an indescribable sound of lamentation, for
there was sent forth from it an inarticulate cry. But from the light there came
forth a holy Speech, which took its stand upon the watery substance, and
methought this Word was the voice of the light. And the Divine Mind spoke for me
to hear:
‘That light is I, even the One Mind, the first God, who was
before the watery substance which appeared out of darkness, and the Word which
came forth from the light is son of God. Learn my meaning by looking at what you
yourself have in you, for in you too, the Word is son, and Mind the father of
the Word. They are not separate one from the other, for life is the union of
Word and Mind. Now fix your thought upon the light and learn to know it.’
“I saw in my mind that the light consisted of innumerable
powers and had come to be an ordered world, but a world without the bounds of
material existence. This I perceived in thought, seeing it by reason of the
words which the Divine Mind had spoken to me. And when I was amazed, he spoke
again to me: ‘You have seen in your mind the archetypal form, which is prior to
the beginning of things and is limitless.’”
Hermes strains to comprehend the meaning of these words, and
wonders how the archetypal form can determine physical reality. “But tell me,”
he asks. “Whence did the elements of nature come into being?” “They issued from
God’s Purpose,” comes the answer, “which beheld that beauteous world and copied
it. The watery substance, the One Thing, having received the Word, was fashioned
into an ordered world, the elements being separated out from it. And from the
elements came forth the brood of living creatures. And the One Mind, that Mind
of Life and Light, being male and female both, gave birth to another Mind, which
was a maker of things; and this made out of the elements seven planets who
encompass with their orbits the world perceived by sense; and their
administration is called Destiny.”
“And forthwith,” Hermes continues, “the Word of God leapt up
from the downward-tending elements of nature to the pure body of the highest
sphere which had already existed and united with Mind the Maker, for the Word
was of one substance with that mind too. And the downward-tending elements of
nature were left devoid of reason, so as to be mere matter.”
The astonishing implication of this divine message is that if
you can reach the One Mind, you can change reality by transforming the One
Thing, the precursor of all physical manifestation. Temporarily split off from
the One Mind, the consciousness embodied in “Mind the Maker” participates in the
fashioning of reality as we know it. This is the same idea as the demiurge or
divine craftsman expressed in some religions. On the microcosmic scale, Mind the
Maker is nothing less than the mind of man, and anyone who is centered and
balanced along the cosmic axis can be in touch with the powers of both the Above
and the Below.
Hermes is eager to learn more, and the Divine Mind continues
to explain the details of creation, showing him all the levels existence from
the basic Four Elements of matter fashioned out of the One Thing to the Eight
Heavenly Spheres contained within the One Mind itself. Next, the Divine Mind
reveals that man himself is a copy of the universe and contains within himself
all the same levels, all the same powers of light and darkness that make up the
fabric of the Above and the Below.
“And I inscribed in my memory the benefaction of the Divine
Mind,” says Hermes upon leaving his altered consciousness, “and I was
exceedingly glad, for I was full with that for which I craved. My bodily sleep
had come to be sober wakefulness of soul; and the closing of my eyes, true
vision; and my silence, pregnant with good; and my barrenness of speech, a brood
of holy thoughts. Becoming God-inspired, I attained the abode of Truth.”
People throughout the ages have had similar encounters in the
rarefied realm of the Above and Below. Jacob’s vision of the ladder, described
in Genesis, is one example. After falling asleep in a field with his head
resting on a rock, Jacob has a vision of a splendid ladder reaching into the
heavens. Using the ladder, the angels (archetypal powers) are able to traverse
heaven and earth. That ladder would become an oft-used image in the art of the
alchemists referring to the Seven Steps of Transformation contained in the
Emerald Tablet.
The twelfth-century Christian mystic Hildegard of Bingen had
many visions similar to that of Hermes in which the One Mind
merged with and organized the dark chaos of the One Thing below, and she
felt that God inscribed the entire divine deed on the human form. For Dominican
cleric Meister Eckhart, created matter was an amalgam made up of soul and
thought. “God is everywhere and is everywhere complete,” he wrote. “God is in
the innermost part of each and every thing.” Eckhart described the One Thing as
something separate from God, a “simple ground and still desert” without any
distinctions, out of which all things were created.
A modern example of traveling in this spiritual realm is that
of a 28-year-old mathematics professor. After being lifted to great heights
during an out-of-body experience, he reported: “All at once, without any further
change, my eyes were opened. Above and in front, yet in me, of me, and around,
was the Glory of the Archetypal Light. Nothing can be more truly light, since
that Light makes all other light to be light; nor is it a flat material light
but a creative light of life itself, streaming forth in love and understanding,
and forming all other lives out of its substance. Far below, as things can be
seen at these times without turning away, there appeared something like the
surface of earth. But this was only for a moment, to make clear the immense
height to which my soul had been raised, and her nearness to the sun.”
The alchemists, whose craft was both spiritual and material
in nature, actually developed step-by-step procedures for working in this
rarefied realm and learning to alter reality. Over the centuries, they
discovered ways of accessing the One Mind and transmuting the physical and
spiritual elements through the One Thing. These transcendental operations are
presented in the second part of this book. However, before we can understand and
apply the powers of the Above and Below in our own lives, we have to try to
comprehend the true nature of the One Thing through which physical,
psychological, and spiritual reality is transformed.
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© Dennis William Hauck